John Eisenhower, Military Historian and Son of the President, Dies at 91

Published: December 22, 2013

John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
who forged a reputation in his own right as a military historian, died
on Saturday at his home in Trappe, Md., on the Eastern Shore. He was 91.

Associated Press

John Eisenhower in 1990.

The death of Mr. Eisenhower, who had been the oldest surviving child of
an American president, was announced by his family.

Mr. Eisenhower was an Army officer in World War II
and the Korean War and a national security adviser during his father’s
presidency, but at that point he was still viewed primarily as the son
of Ike, the American hero.

When he graduated from West Point on June 6, 1944, photographers
gathered for an image of Mr. Eisenhower, the new second lieutenant, with
his mother. But he was seen as a footnote to a historic day: Gen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, had just announced
the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy.

Mr. Eisenhower’s public image began to change in 1969 with the publication of his first book, “The Bitter Woods,”
a history of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. It was a best
seller, and he later wrote about the Mexican-American War and World War
I.

Dwight D. Eisenhower died in March 1969. Two months later, John
Eisenhower took up duties as ambassador to Belgium. He was appointed by
President Richard M. Nixon, the vice president under Eisenhower and the
father-in-law of John Eisenhower’s son, David, who married Julie Nixon.

After two years as an ambassador, John Eisenhower published his memoir, “Strictly Personal.”

“So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848”
was his first book with no connection to his father’s career. When it
was published in 1989, Mr. Eisenhower, a reserved figure who bore a
strong resemblance to his father, reflected on how his life had
invariably been defined. “I was patted on the head as the great man’s
son,” he told USA Today.

The book was well received, prompting him to remark, “God, it feels great.”

John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower was born in Denver while his father was
stationed at an Army post in Panama. As a child, he toured World War I
battle sites with his father, who was writing an Army guidebook to them.
He attended high school in the Philippines during his father’s tour
there and followed his path by entering West Point in July 1941.

When Mr. Eisenhower graduated, Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief
of staff, directed him to spend his brief leave with his father to help
him cope with the tensions arising from the Normandy invasion. Mr.
Eisenhower was soon thrilled to be aboard a Flying Fortress bomber,
heading over the English Channel to visit the battlefront.

But, as he recalled in his memoir, “I was not only his son; I was a
young lieutenant who needed on occasion to be straightened out.”

At one point, he wrote, “I asked him in all earnestness: ‘If we should
meet an officer who ranks above me but below you, how do we handle this?
Should I salute first and when they return my salute, do you return
theirs?’

“Dad’s annoyed reaction was short. ‘John, there isn’t an officer in this
theater who doesn’t rank above you and below me.’ ”

Mr. Eisenhower hoped to see combat as an infantry platoon commander, but
his father’s fellow commanders, Gen. Omar N. Bradley and Lt. Gen.
George S. Patton Jr., feared the impact on his father if he were killed
in action or captured. He was assigned to intelligence and
administrative duties in England and Germany.

He later earned a master’s degree in English and comparative literature
from Columbia University, taught English at West Point and finally
experienced combat at the beginning of a yearlong tour in the Korean
War.

Just after his father won the Republican presidential nomination in
1952, Mr. Eisenhower discussed his coming deployment to Korea with him. Writing in The New York Times
in 2008, he recalled that his father had accepted his decision to seek
combat but “had a firm condition: Under no circumstances must I ever be
captured.” That, he said, was because his father could have been forced
to resign the presidency if the enemy had threatened him with blackmail.

“I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly,” Mr. Eisenhower wrote. “I would take my life before being captured.”

Later, he came to believe that the son of a president or a vice
president should not be allowed to serve in combat, in order to free the
parent of “worries about an individual soldier, especially a child.”

Mr. Eisenhower was a White House adviser on national security affairs
during his father’s second term as president and later worked with him
on his presidential memoirs, “Mandate for Change” and “Waging Peace.” He retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1963 and became a brigadier general in the Reserves.

President Obama said in a statement
on Sunday that Mr. Eisenhower had lived “a big and quintessentially
American life — one of patriotism and character, learning and teaching,
and a deep and abiding sense of service to his country.”

Associated Press

Mr. Eisenhower with his wife, Barbara, and his
parents, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower, on Jan.
21, 1957.

After serving as ambassador to Belgium from 1969 to 1971, Mr. Eisenhower resumed a writing career with his memoir.

He edited “Letters to Mamie”
(1978), a collection of his father’s letters home during the war years,
to rebut longstanding assertions that his father had had an affair with
his Women’s Army Corps chauffeur, Kay Summersby, while he was the
supreme Allied commander. Ms. Summersby’s memoir “Past Forgetting: My Love Affair With Dwight D. Eisenhower” had been published in 1977, two years after her death.

Mr. Eisenhower’s “Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day” (1982) drew in part on his father’s unpublished manuscript recounting the American-British alliance.

In “Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I” (2001), he told of the Army’s emergence as a modern military force. Writing in The Times,
Richard Bernstein called Mr. Eisenhower’s description of Western Front
battles “complex and gripping” and said, “The overall effect of his
sober and careful book is to highlight how much easier it is to create
heroic myths than to win battles.”

Mr. Eisenhower reflected on his father’s association with major military and political figures in “General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence”
(2003). The Journal of Military History called it “wise in its
appraisal of both accomplishments and failures” and “well-researched and
beautifully written.”

Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in his biography “Eisenhower”
that when John was a child, his father gave him “sharp verbal dressing
downs for transgressions, which, given Eisenhower’s standards, were
frequent.” But, Mr. Ambrose added, “over all they got along fine,” and
later “Eisenhower included his son in as many of his activities as
possible.”

In his final years, Mr. Eisenhower joined family members in opposing the
design for a proposed memorial to his father near the National Mall,
saying it was too extravagant. The project’s fate is uncertain.

In addition to his son, Dwight David Eisenhower II, known as David, Mr.
Eisenhower is survived by his wife, Joanne Thompson Eisenhower, who
collaborated with him in writing “Yanks”; three daughters, Barbara Anne,
Susan and Mary, from his marriage to his first wife, the former Barbara
Jean Thompson, which ended in divorce; and eight grandchildren.

John Eisenhower was the second child of Dwight and Mamie Doud
Eisenhower. Their first son, Doud Dwight, died at age 3 from scarlet
fever.

In his memoir in 1974, when he was only beginning to earn a reputation
as an author, Mr. Eisenhower told how he had briefly taken up flying, a
hobby that, he wrote, “remains extremely important in my recollections.”

“Almost everything else I have done during my adult years has been
affected to some extent by my name — by my father’s position, if you
will,” he wrote. “But in the air I had no name; to the Federal Aviation
Agency I was simply Comanche Nine-Nine POP. The quality of my landings,
navigation and judgment were mine alone.”

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: December 22, 2013
An
earlier version of this article misstated the given name of the first
son of Dwight and Mamie Doud Eisenhower. He was Doud Dwight, not Doud
David.